First full inspection. Good and Bad.

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First full inspection. Good and Bad.

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gardening-girl

Joined: 25 Feb 2009
Posts: 6024
Location: Somerset.

Posted: Thu Apr 21, 16 8:34 am Post subject: First full inspection. Good and Bad.

The temperature here got up to 16 degrees yesterday, and we managed to do our first inspection.

Hive 1. This was a small, late swarm last year. Looking good,BIAS on three frames, good brood pattern. Didn`t see HM.

Hive 2. This was a lovely strong swarm from Hen X. How sad. No brood, no sign of the marked queen. Just a box of bees. Barrie is doing a shakeout later.

I can`t afford to buy another nuc, so seem destined to only have one colony. keeping my ears open for swarms this year.

joanne

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 7100
Location: Morecambe, Lancashire

Posted: Thu Apr 21, 16 9:58 am Post subject:
Make sure the first hive is well fed and you'll probably be able to take a nuc from it late spring. I'm going into my girls this weekend if the weather is good, I was looking at them yesterday and they are taking loads of pollen in. I feed mine Ambrosia and they seem to do really well on it, I'm planning to give them a second brood chamber as soon as they need it as well.

Tavascarow

Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Posts: 8407
Location: South Cornwall

Posted: Thu Apr 21, 16 4:29 pm Post subject:
Cut a small square of eggs from the good hive & graft them into the queenless one. Or if that sounds daunting just place it egg side down over the brood frames. If there are no laying workers they will raise a new queen from the eggs.

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 16003

Posted: Fri Apr 22, 16 6:20 am Post subject:
That is a good idea Tavascarow. The alternative might be to combine the two hives and then split them later in the year when there are queen cells, but think your idea is better.

gardening-girl

Joined: 25 Feb 2009
Posts: 6024
Location: Somerset.

Posted: Sat Apr 23, 16 9:36 am Post subject:
Thanks Tav, we`ll give that a try.

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